Roof Worship in Korea

A Korean temple roof is a superb thing: the black tiled eaves – under the gables and on the long sides of the building – swing out over the structure with a curvilinear line; they stretch out quite far and seem to float over the building, propped up by vermilion wooden pillars. The rows of semi-cylindrical tiles give the appearance of ploughed furrows down the roof slope. Follow the line from temple roof to mountain ridge and they merge. It is something to see a temple with a mountain-forest backdrop. Through seasonal pressure changes, you can imagine the roof breathing with taut, diaphragmatic motions; look at the pillars and see long gashes opening along the grain. Gateways are impressions of the larger temple complex; the ones at Geumsansa, a temple just south of Jeonju, are the most beautiful I’ve seen. Temple gateways are freestanding. It feels wrong to walk around them, but their dramatic rooflines encourage you to approach from an angle. At the corner point, the different rooflines meet and reach toward the sky.

The first gate at a Korean temple is the iljumun, one-pillar gate. They are given this name because, viewed from the side, they appear to stand on a single pillar. The roofs appear too big for the posts, blooming outwards and upwards as a cloud or a plant. From underneath, they are gilled, alien mushrooms, flowing with life and colour: turquoise, red, yellow and blue. Geometric patterns adorn the beams, the posts and the lintels, particularly floral motifs. The roof brackets are elaborate, interlocking pieces, carved with curling, cirruslike wisps, lotus stalks and flowers, or sometimes with the heads of dragons. The brackets nest inside each other, rising upward, raising the roof high above the pillars, and it is as if at any moment they could become animate and shift the roof free. The emotional impact is one of calm and serenity – an encouragement towards meditation, and in my case, a place where my imagined, ideal world and reality meet.